Where is Thirdhand Smoke?

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Carpets Retain a Stubborn Grip on Pollutants from Tobacco Smoke

A new study from thirdhand smoke researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory shows that thirdhand smoke chemicals that settle into surfaces do not stay there, but re-enter the air, sometimes transforming into new types of contaminants. In this study, the researchers evaluated the effects of ozonation, a common cleaning method, on smoke-exposed carpet.

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Does Thirdhand Smoke Make You Sick? The German Newspaper Die Zeit Investigates.

As Germany plans to ban smoking in cars with children or pregnant women, the German newspaper, Die Zeit, asked experts to weigh in on the forthcoming policy. The experts concluded that this policy does not go far enough and advised caution, especially for children, due to long-term risks posed by thirdhand smoke exposure (known as cold smoke exposure in Germany). Read the full story to answer the question, “Does Cold Smoke Make You Sick?”

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a man swabs a square sample of a car dashboard to test for thirdhand smoke

Can you test for thirdhand smoke?

Tobacco smoke contains thousands of chemicals that break down and interact with the environment. Scientists have developed sensitive tests1 using those chemical markers that can detect thirdhand smoke chemicals in the air, in house dust, on surfaces of indoor environments, and on people. However, these tests are expensive to conduct and few are available outside of university laboratories available at this time.

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What does it mean when we smell stale tobacco smoke?

Have you ever walked into a room and gotten a whiff of stale tobacco smoke? Or maybe smelled it as someone walked by? The smell of stale cigarette smoke–even when no one is smoking–is a sign of thirdhand smoke. As we breathe in, odor receptors in our noses recognize the chemicals in thirdhand smoke and trigger a signal in our brains that allows us to recognize stale tobacco smoke.

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